The present invention relates to a flooring assembly of rectangular plastic mat elements each shaped as a flat flag member having a top plate portion, a circumferential edge flange depending from an edge of the top plate portion, a circumferential side flange depending from an edge of the top plate portion, and a plurality of floor engaging carrier portions depending from an underside of the top plate portion and with the mat elements being provided with connector means, whereby the mat elements are releasably joinable side to side.
Mat elements or flag members of the aforementioned type can be constructed as robust units, which are nevertheless slightly resilient, whereby the mat elements or flag members, compared with, for example, a concrete floor, are more comfortable to walk and stand on. Additionally, for other reasons, such a flooring is advantageous in many types of floors such as, for example, in workshops, exhibition areas, and many other places. With the use of flag members of a convenient size of, for example, 25.times.25 cm, it is possible to tailor the flooring in situ according to the requirements of a particular location.
The flooring may be arranged around or in front of working machines or positions, along walkways, on areas tending to become wet and slippery, etc., and the flooring is flexible in the same manner that the arrangement of the flag members can be changed when desired or required.
When the flag members are joined in a releasable manner, any sub-area of the flooring can be disconnected and moved to another place and then be rejoined with the flooring at such other place. Of course, the sub-area itself may be rearranged or divided in connection with the change.
However, it is an associated problem that the flag members should be both safely joinable, such that a sub-assembly of the flooring can be handled as a safely coherent structure, and easily separable anywhere throughout the flooring area, so that the separation and rejoining can be effected easily not only on the flag member by the flange, but even along a straight or broken line between the respective coherent flooring areas each comprising many flag members.
In most of the known proposals preference is given to the easy separability. The connector means are shaped such that one edge of a flag member is lowerable over an edge portion of the neighboring flag member to thereby provide a holding engagement between generally vertically oriented interlocking portions. Hereby the holding engagement can be released anywhere, by local lifting of the desired of the edges flange member, but it will be an associated problem that the general coherence in any assembled sub area of the flooring will be low whenever such an area is not rested firmly against the floor, for example, when it is being moved from one place to another by a rearrangement of the flooring.
According to another known proposal preference is given to a safe joining of the flag members, in that the interlocking means comprise movable connector members which are manually operable to be shifted between a retracted inoperative position and an active position, in which a safe interlocking of the adjoining edges of the flag member is secured. However, the actuation of such flag members will require a free access to the underside of the flag members, and, in practice, this will mean that the locking means are accessible only adjacent the outermost edges of any preassembled flooring area. Thus, it is simply impossible to arrange for a separation of a flooring area along a straight or broken line well spaced from the contour of the area, because the manually shiftable interlocking members will simply not be accessible.
It is the purpose of the present invention to provide a flooring of the aforementioned type, which is reasonably easy to separate along any desired line even remote from the outer edges of the flooring area, while a generally very effective coherence between the flag members is not renounced, such that any separated sub area of the flooring may be handled as a unit which will not be liable to disintegrate when it is moved or even thrown around. According to the invention the interlocking connector means are arranged in such a manner that they will require a vertical bending of each respective flag member edge in order to be released from and joined to the complementary locking means or the neighboring flag member, and such a bending cannot, in practice, be effected unintentionally. On the other hand, it may be effected anywhere along the joining lines between the flag members, without requiring acess from a free edge of the flooring area.
A high priority should be given to the coherence between the flags, even so they will resist some unintentional lifting without separating. It will be in order, therefore, that they can be separated only by a pronounced intentional and even strength requiring dislocking, whereby the edges of the flag members edges should be heavily resiliently bent and the flag members correspondingly twisted.
The invention is based on the recognition that a very safe and yet releasable locking is achievable when the interengaging locking members are arranged relatively close to the corners of the flags in a countersymmetrical manner such that at one side of the corner the flag members is liftable from the neighboring flag members, while at the other side of the same corner the flag members is not liftable from the respective adjoining flag member or rather it is liftable therefrom in the opposite direction only. Therefore, the release lifting of a flag member side adjacent the corner will be resisted by the maintained locking engagement in the nearby area at the other leg of the corner such that an effective release is possible only by a pronounced bending and twisting of the adjoining portions of the flag member.
Under these conditions the interacting locking members may be provided as integral portions of the flag members, such that separate joining members may be avoided and the flag members may be entirely uniform at least as far as the locking members are concerned. It has been found advantageous to manufacture the flag members in various series, all having the same main dimensions so as to be interengageable, but provided with different top surface designs, e.g. with large holes, small holes and no holes at all, whereby the user may compose the flooring with sub areas of respective desired surface characteristics.
In the following the invention is described in more detail with reference to the drawings.